


Suicide / Sacrifice

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Character Study, Falling In Love, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 07:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11331480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Nyx wasn’t sure that he believed in sacrifice. He wasn’t sure if he ever did. He’d heard that word so many times, put as a romantic place-holder forslaughter.





	Suicide / Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted with a Tomb Raider quote and Nyx got wordy.

“I know about sacrifice.”

“No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make; loss is a choice made for you.”

Noctis withdrew from him, eyes burning like a thousand dying stars. That’s all he’d been doing since he’d returned. Dying. A slow-moving suicide. Insomnia as the bullet, hanging in suspension. Waiting for him to walk his skull straight through it. Preaching while he bled out in Nyx’s arms that it was sacrifice. That taking life away was for all life’s greater good.

Nyx wasn’t sure that he believed in sacrifice. He wasn’t sure if he ever did. He’d heard that word so many times, put as a romantic place-holder for _slaughter._

Galahd was a “sacrifice” for the greater good of Lucis. His brothers in the Kingsglaive were “sacrificed” for the security of Insomnia. His own hope for ever seeing a future that was not smeared in the blood of his loved ones, was traded for the idea that his suicide was a sacrifice for a safety they could never have.

Noctis now was much like Nyx had been then. More a soldier than a king. Flip the kill-switch and watch him go. Dying for a war he’d never started and content to do so. Following by example. Like his father and his fiancée before him.

But those weren’t sacrifices.

Those were _murders_.

Murder by a greedy Empire. Murder by a petty, false king. And now, murder by daemon pretenders at divinity.

Nyx knew daemons when he saw them. He’d been tasked with exterminating them for nearly half of his life. He recognized the craving for human flesh, the malice towards the light that kept people’s souls alive. He knew the horrible envy for that light, and how daemons dragged humans into the dark just to make the light cry for the loss of another one of its children.

Were the gods truly any different?

What was the return of the light worth if he couldn’t see it through his tears?

He looked at Noctis now, so much older and more _tired_ than he’d ever been before, and Nyx wondered when he’d lost him. He wondered when he’d lost his own light. He had become so accustomed to loss that, one would think, he should know it when it happened.

But he couldn’t remember when he’d lost Noctis and, as he stood there, mourning the man that was hurrying to his death, Nyx couldn’t remember when he’d found him, either.

He couldn’t remember a time before Noctis. Even when he wasn’t in love with him, the prince was always there. And, Nyx supposed, he’d always loved him when he was, in some way or another.

He’d loved the chimes of laughter, pealing throughout the halls of the Citadel. He remembered bitter days, being made to stand up too straight and too still as punishment for moving too fast and too brash on the battlefield. He remembered catching those high notes before their musician came tumbling down the hall. He remembered the brightness of blue eyes, dancing with a smile as he chased a yipping bundle of black and white fur past the toes of Nyx’s boots. He remembered cracking a smirk at the lively, “Good morning!” before the prince’s chase resumed and lead his laughter out of earshot.

Nyx remembered growing to love, rather than resent, being put on corridor duty, if only for how the child-prince’s joy cleansed the bitterness poisoning his veins.

He remembered loving the wide, curious stare, spotlighted on him when Noctis had no animal to tease. He remembered giving quiet, cautious answers to innocent questions about what that chain on his uniform meant, or what this tattoo on his finger meant, or who did the braids in his hair.

He remembered always loving the prince. It was hard not to. He was vibrant and shy and wondering and kind. The brightest jewel set in the Crown. His innocence made it a little bit lighter during Nyx’s darkest thoughts towards it.

In a blink, Noctis grew up. One day, Nyx returned to the Captain’s favorite station for him while he waited out a mild injury from the last outing beyond the Wall. And, all of a sudden, it wasn’t a child’s laughter he heard, coming down the hall.

All of a sudden, Noctis was nineteen and not nine. And Nyx remembered thinking that he shouldn’t love him anymore. Not if his heartbeat was going to change every time he passed him by. Try as he may, Nyx couldn’t make it go back to the way it used to be. A small, steady warmth of humor and delight at beguiling an attentive listener with exaggerated tales of a rogue knight slaying dragons for his king.

He remembered when the tables had turned. When Noctis was more beguiling than any fairytale Nyx had ever inserted himself into just to earn the wide, starry-eyed smile of the boy who made his days a little less loathsome.

He remembered the first time his heart skipped when the prince passed him by at the side of his advisor rather than the tail of his dog. He remembered the shy, secret smile instead of the boisterous “hello” of his childhood as Ignis continued talking and walking and taking him away. He remembered the wily spark in his eyes as he darted down the hall with his rebellious blond friend skittering at his heels. He remembered the duck of those same eyes, as Gladio boasted of his successes in the training room.

He remembered the first time Noctis asked to kiss him, drunk and hurt by something Nyx would never truly know. He remembered the tears on his uniform as, instead of fairytales, Noctis begged to know if anyone could ever love him. Nyx remembered how his heart broke in half as he wrapped shaking arms around him, wanting to tell him that he had always been loved, just never told.

He remembered the shadows beneath the prince’s eyes, and how they never looked directly at Nyx the next morning as he apologized for the night before. And Nyx remembered how his own heart got caught in his throat as he said, “If you think you still want a kiss when you’re sober, give me a call.”

He remembered the blush on his cheeks.

He remembered the blush across his whole body a few weeks of hidden dates later when he took him to bed.

He remembered laying there, at four in the morning, in a cold bed made warm by company he’d never thought he could have, and thinking to himself that it was no longer his job to protect the prince. It was a privilege. It might have always been.

It was his honor to be there, _here_ , when no one else could be. It was a profound joy that he’d lost for a very long time, to be the one that held Noctis’s hand when the rest of the world slapped it away. To dry his tears when he felt too small to survive the enormity of the future set before him.

Nyx remembered when he realized that Noctis was worth _living_ for. He remembered the day that he stopped believing it was a greater honor to die for his king than to live for his love. He remembered when he stopped believing in sacrifice.

It wasn’t a day of any particular significance. It was during a sunrise, brightening the translucent lavender of the Wall overhead, just outside the narrow opening of his window. It was with his arm draped around ivory shoulders, with nails grazing absently along the rise of a beautiful scar. A survivor’s scar. The strength to overcome it was what made it so beautiful to Nyx.

It was on a dawn that was slowly becoming so normal to the both of them. Noctis tucked into his side, arm coiled up his chest and hand lolled against his throat, fingers slumbering along the line of ink there that had been kissed and nipped red. It was beneath the sleepy mumble of breath over Nyx’s shoulder. It was between swollen lips pushing into his skin and in the crack of luminous blue eyes blinking up at him.

“I love you.”

Nyx hadn’t known how much he missed hearing those words. He didn’t know that he’d needed to hear them just as badly as Noctis had begged to hear them the night he’d fallen apart in his arms. He didn’t know that they had been what he needed to save him from the illusion of sacrifice.

He would have died the day Insomnia fell if Noctis didn’t give him a reason to live. He would have failed in his duty, his honor, and his love to protect him, always.

Ten years later, howling in the dark for his vanished lover, Noctis had returned. And he was a mirror to Nyx’s own history.

_Because they’d made him forget._

Whatever had taken him, _stolen him_ from Nyx, had stolen his memory of what Nyx had given back to him that morning.

He reached out for him. Let his fingers glide along his jaw and tilt his lost eyes towards him. And Nyx tried to save him from the spell like Noctis had saved him then. Tried to return the words that Noctis had lost to his own decade of darkness.

“I love you, too.”

Noctis was nineteen again and not thirty. Nyx remembered when his eyes had filled with hope and tears as he whispered the words into his hair in the silence of that dawn. He remembered that his kiss had tasted much like it did now. Salt and sweet and desperate to make it true.

Nyx held him close and spited sacrifice. He gave Noctis his own choice to make rather than the choice made for him. He wouldn’t lose him. Not to a lie.


End file.
